


Dinner and a Show

by bitochondria



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: (for now) - Freeform, 1960s, Academy, Acting, Canon-Typical Behavior, Closeted Gay Hutch, Diners, First Meetings, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Starsky Doesn't Know He's Bi, Theatre
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28902735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitochondria/pseuds/bitochondria
Summary: Given their proximity to Hollywood, it *almost* made sense that the Bay City Police Academy had a dedicated acting coach. But Hutch didn't apply to become an officer to play pretend, and he sure as hell didn't want to run lines with the motormouth military vet he was developing a crush on.A series of vignettes from Starsky and Hutch's days at the academy. Canon S&H numbers require time travel to work; I did my best.
Relationships: Ken Hutchinson/David Starsky
Comments: 36
Kudos: 31





	1. Fall, 1968. Week Two.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the folks on the S&H discord for propelling me to finally write a Starsky & Hutch fic-- why the thing that did it was the idea of a Police Academy Theater Class and not any of a thousand less silly things, I will never know.

He was snoring again. 

Hutch tried to jostle him with his elbow, gently, between seats. His mouth remained ajar. As quietly as possible, Hutch then took his pencil between his fore and middle finger and jabbed him in the side. He jumped up with a start, blue eyes wide, pupils small. He looked around like a cornered animal, neck and shoulders tight, eyes darting all over the room, and then relaxed just as suddenly.

“Thanks, pal,” he whispered, sincere. “They should sell this guy on tape as a sleep aid.” 

Hutch bit his tongue. His new acquaintance was funny enough, and earnest as all get-out, but he had chosen to talk or sleep through all of the last week’s lectures, and Hutch suspected people were starting to think he was a deadbeat, too. 

This David Starsky— he exclusively called himself Starsky, but some of the other cadets had taken to calling him Dave, which irked Hutch to no end— they were the same people who kept trying to call him  _ Kenny _ — was all sunshine, an ace with a rifle, and had the most fantastic ass Hutch had ever seen in standard-issue black slacks. He had also sat down next to Hutch on the first day of training and every subsequent day, unprompted. This would have been fine if not for the talking and sleeping, but the talking and sleeping were irritating at best and outright embarrassing at worst. 

Outside of lectures, Hutch actually kind of liked the guy. More than kind of, really. However, every time he had to poke him awake or ask him to stop talking over the teacher, he could picture the two of them in the principal’s office like snot-nosed kids. 

He just couldn’t wrap his head around joining the academy only to doze through the first week of it. 

“Do you sleep at night?” He whispered back, against his better judgement.

Starsky grinned, chest shaking slightly with silent laughter. “I got a neighbor who practices the tuba all night long,” he lied, obviously enjoying himself, “so this is the only place I can get any shut-eye.” 

Hutch couldn’t help but smile at this, although he tried to shape the expression into more of a smirk. At least he  _ knew _ he was behaving strangely. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who decided to become a cop to sleep more.”

“I’m a very unconventional sort of guy,” Starsky half-shrugged, just a little hop of his shoulders, closing his eyes and jutting out his lower lip. “I thought about moving, but none of the other barracks have such a nice view of the firing range.”

Hutch snorted, brought his hand up to his mouth, and immediately collected himself. The sergeant, who had been discussing criminal behavioral statistics, shot Hutch and Starsky a dirty look. 

“Recruits Starsky and…” He looked down at his clipboard, flipping between sheets of paper. He already knew Starsky’s name cold, the poor bastard. “Hutchinson. Do you have something to add? Have I missed something?”

“No sir,” Hutch snapped, attempting to wrangle his body into something resembling attention. 

Starsky appeared to disagree. “Actually, sir,” he began, causing an instant autonomous clenching of Hutch’s jaw. “It’s my fault— I was asking my friend Hutch here to explain something I didn’t quite understand.” 

Hutch would have preferred to be kept out of this charade, but at least Starsky wasn’t trying to  _ Kenneth _ him to death.

Starsky proceeded to ask a surprisingly insightful question about recidivism, one that took the sergeant by surprise, and ultimately launched him into an explanation that lasted nearly for the rest of class. As soon as he started talking, Starsky turned ever so slightly to look at Hutch, quickly drawing his eyebrows up and back down like—  _ see? _

Something in Hutch’s belly tightened and rolled, not entirely unpleasantly. 

When the class ended, Starsky stood up and stretched prodigiously, arms up over his head, then shoulders back, hands clasped behind his waist. Hutch had been trying for quite a while not to notice that his uniform shirt was unbuttoned to the  _ fourth button _ , but stretching his chest forward, it was impossible to look away from. He was… fuzzy. Hutch busied himself fixing his collar and collecting his notebook, trying very hard not to wonder what it might look like with the rest of those buttons unbuttoned. 

“You with Group A or B today?” Starsky asked, still wriggling his neck and shoulders as they exited out onto the lawn. 

“B,” Hutch answered, distracted. He felt like he needed to put more clothes on as an antidote to Starsky’s escaping pectorals. How no one had written him up for breaking uniform code was a mystery. 

“Damn.” Starsky jammed his hands in his pockets. “I have firearm safety with Dick Grayson and the Teen Titans.” He glanced Hutch up and down. 

They weren’t the only bonafide adults, but a lot of the cadets were eighteen. Fresh out of high school, never been away from home— kids, no matter what the law said. Hutch sort of assumed the reason Starsky had decided to attach himself to him was because they were probably around the same age.

“What, you don’t want to be there when Beaver learns what a ‘safety’ is?”

Starsky grinned, looking at Hutch from the corner of his eye. He pulled one hand from his pocket and snapped his fingers. “Hey, you wanna get dinner later?”

“What, at the mess hall?” Hutch laughed.

“No,” Starsky insisted, looking incredulous. “You’re not from around here, right?” 

“N...o,” Hutch agreed, unclear on this line of questioning. Standing with his notebook clutched over his stomach, warm morning sun on his face, he felt like a teenager. Certainly the last time his hair had been this short he had probably been standing just like this, outside of English class. He wouldn’t have had butterflies in his stomach if Lars Peterson had suggested they go get a burger, however. 

“Well, I know this great all-night deli— you’re gonna love it, they have this pastrami sandwich that— well. You’ll see.” 

“You know we’re gonna get our asses kicked if we get caught sneaking off, right?”

Starsky pointed at Hutch like he was cocking a gun, ignoring his concerns completely. “See you around curfew?” 

Hutch considered protesting— he hadn’t joined the academy to sneak around like a kid at boarding school, and the very idea of eating that late was causing his metabolism to slow down. But instead, he nodded. “Sure.”

“Wear black,” Starsky suggested, and then turned on his heel and started walking towards the firing range. 

“Don’t get your toes blown off,” Hutch shouted after him.

Starsky spun back around, straightened, and gave Hutch a highly non-regulation salute. 

Hutch drifted vaguely in the direction of the parking lot, wondering what he had just gotten himself into. 

At around ten o’clock, he found out. 

Hutch padded as quietly out of the dorm as he could, only to immediately feel a hand shoot out of the darkness and grab his elbow. His innards jellied. 

“Starsky?” He rasped, hoping he wasn’t about to be caught like a dog with a mouthful of turkey dinner.

“Thank god it’s you,” Starsky’s voice returned, apparently just as relieved as Hutch. 

“Why did you grab me if you didn’t know it was me?”

“I don’t know!” Starsky was theoretically whispering, but in practice he was just kind of speaking in a loud, breathy voice. “I thought I should let you know I was here, but I didn’t think about what I’d do if I grabbed someone else!”

“That’s really dumb!”

“I’m really hungry!” 

Hutch snorted, and immediately brought his hands up to cover his mouth.

They started walking towards the gate.

“I’m surprised your shadow didn’t notice you were leaving.”

“My shadow?” Hutch’s brow furrowed. As far as he knew, the only person who had been shadowing him this past week was Starsky. 

“Skinny guy. Blondeish, cheek bones?” Starsky mimed something inexplicable that Hutch assumed was supposed to mean ‘facial bone structure’ but could have just have easily meant ‘large breasts’ or something Italian and offensive.

Hutch squinted. “Colby?”

Starsky nodded. “Yeah, that guy.” 

Hutch rather liked Colby, but was surprised to hear he was the aforementioned ‘shadow.’ He was a little bit younger than Hutch, but not a total kid like some of the other recruits, and he was easy-going with a puckish sense of humor. He was cute. Hutch had had a couple of conversations with him that had almost, just barely, maybe-possibly felt like flirting, but Colby had hardly been following him around. If anything, Hutch realized, suddenly a little embarrassed, he had been chasing Colby a little. He made a mental note to back off. 

“He was in firearms training with me today.” Starsky scratched at the back of his head, peering around the corner of a building. “Does having your hair this short drive you nuts? It drives me nuts. Thought I was done with that after Basic.” 

He rounded the corner and gestured for Hutch to follow, providing neither time nor space for an answer to his question. 

“Anyway— Colby— he was the only one I didn’t feel like I needed to swap his revolver for a water pistol.” 

The way he said ‘water pistol’ made Hutch smile. He didn’t sound like a California native.

“I know that’s why we’re in training,” he continued, grabbing Hutch by the sleeve of his turtleneck. He began a run across the parking lot, dragging Hutch with him. “But some of these kiddos look like they still have their learner’s permits.”

Jogging past the gate, Starsky kept talking.

“Speaking of learner’s permits, you got to take out a cruiser today, right?”

Hutch raised one eyebrow. ‘Got to’ wouldn’t have been his phrasing, but Starsky seemed very excited about the prospect of driving a police car.

“Yeah. We practiced turning the lights on and making u-turns.” He shrugged. It really hadn’t been very exciting. 

“How’d it handle? Was it a Polara, or just a Fairlane?”

Hutch tried to picture any kind of insignia from the car he had driven in uneventful circles today. Nothing came to mind. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, yes you do. Was it Andy Griffith’s car?”

“Yes!”

Starsky scrunched his mouth up to the side. “Just a Fairlane. Bummer.” 

“Sorry?”

“Y’know, I bought an absolute beater of a Corvette from a friend in high school,” he sighed, features wistful as he faced the moon. “It broke down basically every week, but damn, you’d get out onto open road and…” He held his hands in front of him, looking like he couldn’t find the right word. “It was like flying.” He grinned back at Hutch, teeth white in the moonlight. “Scared the shit out of my aunt, though. She made me sell it. At the time I thought I’d never forgive her, but. Y’know. She only did it because she was worried.” 

They walked to the diner— it took nearly an hour— Starsky waxing philosophical on every topic from cars to movies to his favorite kinds of swimsuits on girls. He clearly didn’t believe in the concept of ‘comfortable silence.’ Hutch mostly listened. Even if he jumped topics like a junebug on bennies, he was pretty entertaining. Hutch found himself vaguely irritated by certain turns of phrase— there were words he kept using wrong, for one— and then laughing uncontrollably at other things. David Starsky certainly wasn’t  _ boring _ .

He held the door to the diner for Hutch, commenting as he passed— 

“You’re real tall, you know that?”

Hutch blinked and nodded. “Yeah.”

“I just didn’t think you were that tall before,” Starsky shrugged. Hutch followed him to a red and white booth, vinyl and melamine. 

In the humid fishbowl light of the all-night diner, sitting face to face, Hutch noticed some things about Starsky. The kind of things one wasn’t supposed to notice about a motormouth straight boy who probably only took shop classes in high school. Like— his hair had a definite curl pattern to it, even cropped short. His eyes weren’t just blue, they were Atlantic blue— the color of the sea, far out from shore, whitecapped and reflecting a cool grey sky. His smile was crooked, with one corner of his mouth always a little higher than the other. He had solid, strong arms, and in a black t-shirt and jeans, looked a little like a greaser. He was handsome in an easy, casual, blue-collar sort of way— like he just woke up like that, every day. 

Hutch found himself irritated and captivated in equal parts.

The waitress, an ample older woman with greying hair bunned imperfectly at the top of her head, came over to their table.

“Shirl-girl, my darling, apple of my eye, light of my heart, how is my favorite lady?” 

She rolled her eyes as Starsky sparkled up at her, but her smile told a different story. 

“Same as always, Davey,” she sighed, sweetly, one hand on her hip as she poured them each a cup of coffee with the other. “What’s with the hair? You’re not going back overseas, are you?”

“Why, are you finally thinking of taking me up on my marriage offer? Worried I’m going to leave you?”

“Honey, my husband’s not interested in polygamy, and I wouldn’t divorce him for you.” 

Starsky slapped the table in mock disappointment. “Well, offer is always open.” He bypassed her question about his hair and jumped right to ordering. “Shirley, can me an’ my friend Hutch here each get a pastrami on rye with a side of potato salad, extra pickles, two bowls of matzo ball soup, and an order of fries to split?” 

Hutch’s eyes bugged out. “Um—” He cleared his throat. “Half sandwich, please, for me. With a green salad, please.” 

Shirley’s eyes darted to Starsky and then back to Hutch. “Sure thing, hun. Still want the soup?”

“Sure,” he acquiesced, although he didn’t really want that much food. “But make it a cup.”

Shirley left, taking her coffee pot with her. 

“You’re gonna regret a half sandwich and a cuppa soup,” Starsky warned him. 

Hutch agreed, but for the opposite reason he thought Starsky was probably suggesting. 

Starsky stirred two sugar cubes and an artery-clogging dose of creamer into his coffee and sipped it. “So, tell me about yourself, Hutchinson.” 

“What, like, birthdate, favorite color, social security number?” Hutch laughed, raspy and a little awkward. 

“No,” Starsky shook his head, one slow glide to the left and back, “like… why are you here? Where’d you come from? Who do you think was the all-time best slugger for the Giants?”

Hutch snorted. “Don’t these things usually come up in the course of normal conversation?”

“Yeah, but you keep shushing me every time I try to talk to you during seminar.” 

The desire to point out that one was not, in fact, supposed to talk during seminar loomed large, but Hutch bit his tongue. He couldn’t quite read Starsky’s expression— the extent to which he was serious was impossible to discern. 

He sighed. “I’m from Minnesota. I moved to Bay City about a month ago, stayed with a friend until training started…” He sipped his coffee, looking up at the hammered tin ceiling. “And I came here because… I was tired of intangibility.” 

“Intangibility?”

Hutch wasn’t sure whether Starsky was questioning his meaning or the word itself. 

“Not doing anything worthwhile. Everything being theoretical.” After college, he had worked for a friend of his father’s, doing a meaningless job that he hated. He felt like he was drowning, a teaspoon at a time. 

But he was hardly going to say that to a stranger. He pivoted before Starsky could ask any further questions. “And I was never that much of a Major League fan, not enough to know every slugger on a bubblegum card. Twin Ports League were my boys.”

“It was a trick question anyway, I was always more of a Dodgers fan.” 

Hutch nodded appraisingly, trying to conceal his growing smile with his coffee cup. 

“So, this,” he gestured to the diner, “the accent, the Dodgers… You’re a New Yorker?”

Starsky wobbled his head back and forth, lips slightly pursed, like he was weighing the options. “By birth. But I’ve lived here since I was a kid.” 

“Did you move here to follow the Dodgers?”

Starsky grinned and pointed accusingly at Hutch across the table. “That’s good, you’re good!”

“And you’re… army?” 

“You’re training to be a detective already, aren’t you?” Starsky’s smile was genuine, at odds with what sounded vaguely like sarcasm. He nodded. “I was.” He did not elaborate.

Starsky shifted in his seat, tucking one foot up under him in the booth. He leaned his elbow on the table. He looked at Hutch, and then at the ketchup bottle and the napkin dispenser. For a moment, his face went a little tight, like whatever thought he was currently experiencing  _ wasn’t  _ merely the endless nattering of the last hour or so. And then he asked, “What’s your favorite sport?”

“To do, or to watch?”

“To do.”

Hutch scratched at his chin with the pad of his thumb. “Wrestling.”

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“Are you doing a write-up for the Academy newspaper or something? Running a dating service?”

“Y’know, that’s an idea,” he swallowed, licking an errant drip of coffee from his lower lip. “Bet a lot of these greenhorns have no idea how to meet girls.”

“And you’re gonna help them?” 

Shirley returned with their food before Starsky could explain his spontaneously generated Police Cadet Escort Service idea. 

“The usual for Davey,” she cooed, placing an enormous sandwich and veritable lake of soup in front of Starsky, “and the number two combo for Blondie.” She handed Hutch his slightly more reasonable portion of food. Fries landed square between them. “Need anything else, boys?”

“Other than your beautiful face?” Starsky winked, sandwich already halfway to his mouth. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” Shirley beamed, and then started to turn away.

“Wait— what kind of pie is there today?”

Hutch couldn’t hold his tongue on this one. “Maybe eat your sandwich  _ before _ you order pie?”

Starsky took this under advisement, nodded, and let Shirley go. 

Hutch poked the large ball of bread floating in his soup with his spoon. What the hell had this man ordered for him? “So why,” he asked, attempting to fish a carrot— a friendly, familiar carrot— from the broth, “Are you  _ Davey _ to her, but Starsky to everyone else?” 

He lifted a spoonful of broth and the carrot slice to his mouth. 

“Well,  _ Ken _ ,” Starsky replied, shooting Hutch a level stare over the top of his rye, “Shirley’s known me since before I could grow peach fuzz, so I think by her accounting I’ll be Davey until I die.” 

Hutch was pleasantly surprised to discover that the soup tasted very much like chicken noodle without the noodles. He still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the bread lump, but if he broke it up with his spoon it might be okay. 

Tasking himself with chopping up the strange soup ball, Hutch asked, “Can  _ I _ call you Davey?” He regretted it as soon as the words came out of his mouth. He had legitimately intended it as teasing, not flirtatious, but he couldn’t be sure that’s how he’d be read. If this ex-army tough guy thought he was a pansy, he was in for some serious trouble. 

And more than that— he really didn’t want this guy not to like him. 

Even if he did snore in class.

But Starsky just laughed. “Not if you want me to show you where to get good grub and meet choice babes, and not if you don’t want  _ me _ to call  _ you _ Kenny.” 

“If you call me Kenny I will smother you in your sleep,” Hutch threatened, drawing his sandwich up to his mouth. 

“Try it,” Starsky countered, a smile on his face and a look in his eyes that threatened legitimate danger. 

Hutch chewed, weighing contradictions. He knew it was pretty common for vets to join the force, but Starsky didn’t really strike him as all that soldier-like, or all that cop-like. At the same time, sometimes there was a tautness to his bearing and a sharpness in his eyes that made him seem like an unplucked bowstring. 

The edge of his expression dulled and he shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I mean, I say that, but…” He feigned sheepishness. “You already know that if you wait until Sergeant Valium is talking, I’m a goner.”

Pastrami made a valiant attempt to lodge itself in Hutch’s lung; he cough-laughed with his hand over his mouth until he could manage to swallow. 

“How’s the sandwich?” Starsky’s smile was razor sharp.

Still incapacitated by smoked meat, Hutch balled up his napkin and threw it at him. 

Starsky laughed, throwing it right back. Hutch pulled the plate of french fries between them closer in retaliation, although the last thing he wanted was an entire side order of fries. Starsky kicked him under the table, and Hutch kicked him back. It was all very juvenile, and Hutch felt like he had finally exhaled after a week of holding his breath. They were both grinning from ear to ear. 

“You wanna take this outside?” Starsky reached across the table and took one of the pickle spears from Hutch’s plate.

“No,” Hutch declined, taking one of Starsky’s pickle spears in return. “I want to eat my sandwich in peace like an adult.”

Shirley walked by with her coffee pot just as Hutch said this.

“You hear this?” Starsky gestured at Hutch, addressing Shirley. “Blondie can dish it, but he can’t take it. Thinks he’s gonna be a police officer when he can’t even hold onto his pickles.”

The roll of Shirley’s eyes was so prodigious that Hutch could feel it in his brain stem, like a psychic attack.

She ignored his assessment of Hutch’s fitness for law enforcement. “You need a refill?” 

Hutch held his cup out with a dazzling smile. 

“You know,” he purred, with no goal except to annoy Starsky, “This knucklehead here isn’t your only option. I’m single, too.” 

Shirley shrugged as she poured. “That’s not a shock.” 

Immediately, Starsky began howling with laughter. Hutch felt his face grow slightly warm. 

“For either of you!” She looked between them both, not annoyed, exactly, but definitely judgemental. “Little boys in grown-up clothes, tossing napkins at each other. Davey here’s been fourteen for a decade.” 

Starsky’s laughter stopped abruptly, his brow furrowing, and Hutch snorted loudly. He bit his lip and tried not to laugh, but couldn’t quite manage. As his shoulders shook, Starsky started back up again, and they were both in stitches as Shirley left, muttering about slingshots and pockets full of frogs.

Hutch touched the back of his index finger to his lips, attempting to quiet himself. 

“Maybe we should stop complaining about all the kids at the academy,” he chuckled, digging his spoon into his soup once more.

Starsky made a honking noise into his coffee, cheeks dimpled. 

Calmed, they ate. 

This time, Hutch broke the silence. 

He took his spoon from his mouth and looked across the table. 

“Hey Starsky.”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell is a matzo ball?”


	2. Week Four.

Starsky squeezed through the door at the same time as Hutch, briefly pressed arm to arm. He had no sense of personal space, but Hutch found he didn’t really mind. It wasn’t because he thought he was attractive— in fact, usually that stood as an insurmountable barrier to casual physical contact with other men. It wasn’t a thrill, not really, and it wasn’t nerve-wracking, either. It just… was. 

John waved to them from a few rows down and they joined him, Hutch sandwiched in the middle. On a purely theoretical level, he appreciated that two handsome men both wanted his company, but from a practical perspective, it was largely an inconvenience. Since he would be unceremoniously thrown off the force if anyone ever discovered his leanings, he intended to keep his leanings permanently under wraps. It would have been better if Starsky and John were funny-looking.

“Hey Hutch,” John chimed, smiling a close-mouthed smile. “Starsky.”

“John.” Starsky nodded. 

Hutch crossed his legs at the ankles and flipped the desk part of his seat into position. He flipped his notebook open to a new page, dated it, and titled it ‘Undercover Work.’ John did the same, in a small pocket notebook, following Hutch’s lead. Starsky shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

They were all a little early— most of the room was still empty, and the officer who was supposed to be running the training hadn’t arrived yet. Starsky was there by Hutch’s grace; he had taken it upon himself to make sure his excitable new friend got to lectures on time. After their diner adventure, most mornings Starsky had rushed in fifteen minutes late, loud and smiling and apologetic and generally making an enormous nuisance of himself. Hutch had shrank in his seat every time. So, since they had already been eating most of their lunches together; Hutch suggested maybe he join Starsky for breakfasts, too. He had had fairly good success herding him out the door on time with the promise of food. In turn, Starsky was no longer making an ass of himself at the start of every class and then immediately planting said ass directly next to Hutch. 

John leaned over and doodled Kilroy at the top of Hutch’s page. 

“What do you think ‘Principles of Undercover Detective Work’ is going to be about, anyway?” 

Hutch shrugged, watching his clean page be defaced. “Probably a lot of stuff about how to keep your facts straight, not respond to your own name.”

“Y’think?” Starsky looked at Hutch with a duck-like expression, eyebrows down, lips pursed. “Damn. I was hoping maybe we’d get to make up secret identities or something.”

“Starsky, how the hell could that possibly make us better cops?” 

He shrugged. “Teaching us how to commit to a role?” 

John snorted. “Maybe they’ll just have us all lie to one another and whoever doesn’t get figured out by the end of the course gets an A.” 

Starsky took Hutch’s notebook and pen and started sketching a crude masked bandit. 

He waxed vaguely philosophical as he drew. “I feel like we don’t do enough hands on training, I mean, other than defense techniques and driving, y’know—” 

The bandit’s shoulders, in a striped shirt, stretched down past the top margin and into the actual lines of the page. Hutch pulled his notebook away. “Would you please stop that?”

“—all this theoretical junk is no use to me,” he continued, giving Hutch a look of minor annoyance. “Hearing someone rattle off drug use statistics doesn’t tell me anything I couldn’t figure out better by just, y’know, getting to know people on the streets.”

Hutch rolled his eyes. “You can’t just befriend your way out of every legal situation, Starsky, you need to have a solid background in law and procedure. We’re not here to become camp counselors, we’re here to learn how to uphold justice in a democratic system.”

Starsky puffed out one cheek, crossing his arms. 

“I mean, they have to do their due diligence,” John shrugged. “If the academy were just gun training and holds any wacko could come in and learn how to use a service revolver and bolt. I think the paper writing is mostly to make us prove we’re serious.”

Hutch scrunched his face up. “John, that’s—” He cleared his throat. “They make you write papers because they need to know you understand the  _ point _ of what we’re doing, that you’ve… you’ve  _ internalized  _ the values of—”

“No,” Starsky interrupted, shifting in his chair so one foot was beneath him and he was facing Hutch. “Neither of you are understanding what I’m saying, I’m not talking about  _ physical _ hands-on training, I’m—”

A booming voice echoed through the classroom, cutting Starsky off before he could explain how something could be hands-on without being physical. “Recruits, stand at attention please!”

The room rose to its feet all at once, conversation stopping as eyes turned to the officer at the front. It wasn’t Sergeant Soporific, but instead one of the officers in charge of vehicular safety. However, he was standing next to a long-legged man in flared jeans and a ringer shirt with an unfamiliar logo on it, someone Hutch had never seen before. The long-legged man’s hair was black, curled, and significantly too long for regulation. He was holding a stack of paper against one hip, fingers thin and brown. Officer Rodgers— the car guy— seemed like he wished he could close one eye and pretend he wasn’t there.

“As I’m sure you all know,” Officer Rodgers began, clearing his throat, “Last year Bay City PD was involved in a… in a scandal regarding one of its undercover operatives.”

Hutch was not, in fact, aware of this. He glanced over his shoulder at Starsky, who shrugged. 

“As we wish to avoid any further unpleasantness, we’ve partnered with the,” he took a deep breath, as if preparing to swallow something deeply unpleasant, and continued, “Bay City Players, who will be teaching all our cadets the skills they will need to succeed undercover.” He glanced briefly at the man beside him, and then started speaking again, louder and more forcefully, as if he needed to convince himself of his words. “This was not a choice undertaken lightly. You will do as Mr. Reyes tells you, and you will treat this course like any of the rest of your courses.” He clicked his heels together, probably a bit less military and a bit more Dorothy than he had wanted. The man was  _ rattled _ . “Understood?”

“Yes sir!” Echoed the room. 

“At ease.” 

Officer Rodgers departed in an instant, seemingly magnetically repelled by the  _ actor _ in their midst.

Mr. Reyes stepped forward, waving with the hand that wasn't full of paper. “Hi everyone!”

There was the vaguest of murmurs in return.

“I’m Willis. You guys don’t have to call me Mr. Reyes, I’m,” he smiled dopily, “Well, I mean, I’m not big on titles.”

John leaned with just his arm and wrote, “ _ A beatnik is teaching our class…” _ on Hutch’s notebook.

“Anyway, I’ve been asked to help prepare you for undercover work. You’re probably thinking, ‘oh my god, this freak thinks he knows anything about being a police officer, what the hell is this long-hair doing here,’” he gestured palms up to the class, almost like he was expecting applause at a stand-up show, “But believe it or not, I was actually a cop before I decided to pursue acting.” 

He shifted his stack of papers to the other hip. “So it’s my job to make sure all of you are competent enough actors that you don’t end up, uh. Well.” He licked his lower lip and laughed. “My contract says I’m not allowed to talk about what happened to Officer Paulekas.” 

This got a minor, hesitant rise out of most of the cadets, John included. Hutch and Starsky appeared to be left out of the joke. 

“To that end,” he explained, a brief pause between each word as he licked his thumb and pulled the top packet off the stack of papers. “We’re gonna start this week with some short scenes, just to get you used to the idea of taking direction and really listening to a partner.” He started passing documents down each row of cadets. “And over the next few weeks, we’re going to work up to longer pieces, and as a final project, you’ll be writing your own characters and creating dialogue between them, partially scripted, but also partially improvisationally.” 

“This is great,” Hutch muttered, under his breath. “Just fantastic.” 

“I dunno,” Starsky whispered, eyeteeth shining in a mischievous smile, “Sounds kinda fun.”

“I don’t need _acting_ _classes_ to know how to lie to criminals. This is ridiculous.”

John provided little support or clarity, simply stating, “Well, after what happened with the Peruzzi crime syndicate last year…” 

Voice a harsh whisper, Hutch asked, “What  _ did _ happen last year?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I just moved here. I’ve never heard of Officer Whatshisface or the Peruzzi Crime Syndicate before today.”

John looked earnestly surprised, and a little disappointed. “Starsky, you’re from around here, you’ve gotta know.”

Starsky shrugged, looking straight ahead. “Not a lot of tabloid news made it from Bay City to Da Nang, I guess.” 

Willis continued his instructions as he walked up the stairs to Hutch’s row, passing Starsky the last few packets. “Partner up,” he announced to the room. “One person takes the A part, the other B. Read through it carefully, practice it aloud a few times, and be prepared to perform in front of the class.”

“Kill me,” Hutch hissed, nearly silent, through his teeth. 

He felt Willis’ eyes on his face and turned to look at him. 

Willis smiled without malice, soft and understanding. “I promise it won’t,” 

Hutch returned an icy stare he didn’t feel, his stomach rolling. He didn’t want to play pretend, especially not in front of a bunch of future cops. He didn’t want this soft-eyed man’s sympathy. He sure as hell didn’t want to have already been singled out on his first day of this stupid class. 

He ripped two of the packets from Starsky’s hands and handed one to John, pointedly not looking at Willis as he walked back to the front of the room. His face was burning. 

Starsky flipped through the packet. “These are all scenes from movies.  _ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof _ ,  _ Casablanca _ ,  _ Rebel Without a Cause _ ...” He raised his eyebrows twice in quick succession, Grouch-Marx style. “How’s your Ilsa?” 

Teeth gritted, Hutch declined to answer.

“These are all two-person scenes,” John noted, squinting at the pages. He shouted Willis back over. “Hey, can we be a three-person group?”

Willis looked at John and then looked around the room, counting. There were an odd number of people in the room, not counting himself. He frowned. 

“I was told there were supposed to be 16 in this group…” He crossed his arms, leaning heavily on one leg, head tipped to the side. It was a brazenly effeminate pose, and Hutch wanted to slither under his seat. These men were going to eat this poor fruit alive. 

One of the very boyish cadets— Latimer, maybe— who was already sitting face to face with another man, turned his head over his shoulder. “Phillip Stowers is in the infirmary, sir.” Seeing no immediate response from Willis, he provided further explanation. He pointed at another baby-faced recruit a few seats over. “Grant ran over his foot.”

Grant colored. “They said it wasn’t broken! He should be back next class.” 

Satisfied with this explanation, Willis nodded, turning back to Hutch’s group. “Sure. If you give me a second, I can get you a three-person scene.” He picked up a worn messenger bag from a chair and pulled out a green binder. 

Hutch threw his feet out under the chair in front of him, crossing his arms in frustration. He chewed at the inside of his cheek, boring a hole in Willis’ back with his eyes. 

“Neither of you find this ridiculous?”

John shrugged. “It’s not what I expected, but considering some of these guys can barely manage to lie about uniforms or curfew, I don’t think it’s unwarranted.” 

“Relax,” Starsky counselled, smacking Hutch’s upper arm with the back of his hand. “Just think of it as a break from real work.” 

Willis looked up from his binder, rings open. “ _ Paths of Glory _ ,  _ Ben-Hur _ , or  _ Rio Bravo _ ?”

John and Starsky answered, respectively, at the same time:

“ _ Paths of Glory _ .”

“ _ Rio Bravo _ !”

They looked at one another, irritated, and then to Hutch. 

Hutch palmed his eyes, rubbing at both sides of his forehead. There was no way he was playing bitter biblical exes with either John or Starsky, so he was going to have to play tiebreaker instead. Both options sounded excruciating, but at least a scene from  _ Rio Bravo _ might have the advantage of  _ not _ being tense and heartfelt. 

“I vote cowboys,” he muttered, defeated. 

Willis handed Starsky the pages from  _ Rio Bravo _ with a smile. Starsky legged it over the row in front of them and sat backwards in the chair so he was facing Hutch and John. 

“I call John Wayne,” Starsky exclaimed, fidgety and grinning. Of course he did. 

Hutch tried to recall anything about the movie other than the old jailer with the unfortunate name— _ Stinky? No. That wasn’t it. Stumpy. _ He took the script from Starsky’s hands. 

“I’ll be…” He looked down at the page. “Um. Dude, I guess.”

John grabbed the script next. “As long as I don’t have to be the hooker, I’m fine…” His eyes scanned the first page. “I think I’m Colorado.” 

They practiced, Hutch barely able to peel himself from the chair or muster enthusiasm above a mumble. Starsky did the worst John Wayne impression of all time, but seemed to be enjoying himself. John actually seemed like a fairly competent actor, which surprised Hutch quite a bit. The scene called for Hutch’s character to light a cigarette, and the second time through, John pulled a lighter from his pocket and held it, unlit, a smoke’s distance away from Hutch’s lips. Hutch’s mouth went dry. 

After everyone had had a chance to go run their scene a few times, Willis called the class to attention, and had each pair present. Grant, the red-faced perpetrator of vehicular assault, raised his hand excitedly, and he and his partner went first. They were enthusiastic, and bad. Each of the groups stood up at the front of the room and ran through their scene, and then were subjected to critique. Most of the cadets were not particularly capable actors, and a handful of them carried themselves with the same sluggish defiance that Hutch had been oozing. Willis’ critiques were fair and even-handed, but the overall sense that they were doing something patently ridiculous prevailed.

Starsky had attempted to volunteer, but Hutch had grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the armrest of his seat. He had gotten the hint, glumly. Nonetheless, eventually Hutch’s group was compelled to go, and they stood up and performed the scene.

Willis praised John’s naturalism.

He had less positive things to say about either Starsky or Hutch.

“David,” he started, squinting and pressing his lips together between his teeth before moving on, “I really liked your enthusiasm, but I wish you hadn’t been trying to perform another actor’s performance. I know it can be hard to separate something you’ve seen from the text in front of you, but…” He took the script from Starsky’s hand, standing arm-to-arm with him. He traced over one of Chance’s lines with his thumb. “If you’re just looking at the words, and not thinking about John Wayne— what’s the emotion here?”

Hutch rolled his eyes, arms crossed. His head lolled to one side, very briefly, before he realized he was standing the same way Willis had earlier. He straightened his posture and uncrossed his arms. 

Starsky chewed at the inside of his lip. “He’s scared. He’s pretending he’s not, but he doesn’t know if he can make this whole plan work.” 

Willis lit up. “Exactly! If you read it like that— like you’re scared, but you can’t let anyone know— then it’s going to be so much more powerful than if you read it like you’re John Wayne  _ acting _ like you’re acting brave.” He patted Starsky on the back. “Cut the accent, the swagger— make it about who this guy really is here on the page, not who someone else made him on the screen.”

Starsky nodded, open and earnest. He was absolutely taking this to heart, like it would ever matter in a million years that he could ‘get closer to the text’ of some stupid cowboy scene. 

“And, Kenneth—” Willis turned to Hutch, apparently satisfied with Starsky’s potential as a student. 

“Hutch or Hutchinson.” He was not going to be on a first-name basis with this guy.

“Hutch,” Willis corrected himself, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards, “I know you know this already, but…” He shrugged, head cocked slightly to the left, eyebrows high. “You’re not trying.” 

“How do you know I’m not trying?” Hutch was not entirely sure why he was arguing. The smart thing would have been to nod and say ‘yessir,’ and then move on and not think about this class or this soft-spoken brown-eyed actor until the next time he was forced to publicly humiliate himself. “Maybe this is the best I can do.” He smiled, closed-mouth, pouring acid from his eyes. 

Willis nodded quietly, uncowed. “Is that what you think?”

Hutch froze, not expecting the question to be turned back on him. 

Before he could raise an answer or a further objection, Willis put his hand on his shoulder. He flinched. 

“I just want you to try.” He gave Hutch a look of understanding that Hutch shrank under. He didn’t  _ want _ this jerk to think he understood him. He wasn’t supposed to be that easy to read.

“Okay,” Willis yelled to the class, removing his hand from Hutch, “I want everyone to practice one more time, taking our critiques to heart! You’ll show me the improved version of your scene in… ten minutes, and then you can go!” He clapped twice. “Go to it!”

Lowering his volume almost to a whisper, he turned back to Hutch before he could rejoin Starsky and John. The collegiality in his voice had been replaced with something colder, deeper, more honest. “I don’t think you want to have this conversation in front of everyone else here.” He shrugged. “I get it. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to do this. I expect that from these kids. I mean, all the macho bullshit is…” He sighed, and Hutch cut him off before he could continue.

“Don’t pretend you know me,  _ Sir _ .” Hutch practically spat the last word. “I will do what you tell me to do, but I’m not going to pretend that this is somehow going to make me a better cop.”

Hutch blew past Willis and back to his seat, Starsky and John already waiting.

“Yeesh,” Starsky cautioned, brows raised. “Looked for a second like—” 

“Shut up, Starsky.” Hutch grabbed the script from him. “Let’s do this and get out of here.”

Starsky shot John a look that John did not return. 

They practiced, and Hutch volunteered them to go first when it was time to perform. He was not staying in this classroom one moment longer than necessary. John remained consistent, unrattled by Hutch’s seething. Hutch played Dude very angry, and Willis complimented him on it, which made him even angrier. Starsky, Hutch had to note, even through his teeth-grinding irritation, did a bang-up job. Stripped of his bow-legged John Wayne-ness, he played the part with an equal mix of steel and wariness. Despite himself, Hutch found his eyes on Starsky’s lips as he spoke his lines. 

Willis congratulated them on a job well done. He looked at Hutch, opened his mouth, and closed it again, and then merely nodded.

“You three can go.” He offered his hand to Starsky, who shook it gladly. “You make a much better sheriff than John Wayne impersonator. Good work.” He looked to Hutch and John. “Looking forward to seeing what you can do next time. See you on Friday.”

His eyes were on Hutch even though he was speaking to both of them.

Hutch left in a hurry. 


	3. Week Five.

“Intangibility—” Starsky pronounced the word like he was about to make a political speech. 

Hutch raised an eyebrow as he sat down beside him with his tray. 

“—The state of having no physical presence, of being impossible to touch or ascribe a specific value to.” He looked at Hutch. “I have to figure you were a ghost before you moved here.”

“Starsky,” Hutch sighed, his brain swimming, “I’m going to need you to translate.” It was too early in the morning for whatever this was.

Starsky finished chewing a bite of sausage and eggs, tapping his finger on the tabletop. “You said,” he swallowed, “That you came here because you were tired of intangibility. I had to look up ‘adjudicatory,’ and I figured, while I was at it, I should look up ‘intangibility,’ too.” 

Hutch poked at his grapefruit half, more taupe than ruby red. He blinked stickily and looked at Starsky. 

“Well, I looked it up, and I have some follow-up questions.”

Hutch snorted.

“Shoot, Starsky.” 

“What were you doing before you came to California that had ‘no physical presence?’” 

Slicing his hardboiled egg in half with the side of his fork, Hutch shrugged. “After college I worked with a friend of the family, at his company, and…” He split each half into a quarter. “There wasn’t anything wrong with it, it wasn’t the right thing for me. Felt like I was just… waiting, I guess.”

Starsky nodded, biting into a slice of buttered toast. “Well that explains why you’re not there,” he chewed, totally oblivious to standard etiquette, “But why here?”

Hutch slowly, quietly chewed a quarter of his egg before answering. “I needed to do something immediate. Something where I could see the results of what I was doing on the ground level.” He thought about his parents’ objections— his sister’s gentle insistence that maybe he ought to consider teaching or something in the medical field rather than law enforcement. “And,” he sighed, admitting something to this relative stranger that he hadn’t admitted to anyone else, “To piss off my family.” 

Starsky laughed, almost choking on his coffee. 

Hutch laughed with him. “It is kind of stupid, huh?”

“No,” Starsky insisted, shaking his head. “I enlisted under…” He smirked. “Similar circumstances, I guess.” 

Hutch sipped his coffee. “And what brought  _ you _ here?”

Starsky carefully piled a forkful of eggs onto a corner of his toast, and then layered that with a small fragment of loose bacon. Before he bit into his creation, he shrugged and answered, “Bored, I guess.” 

“...bored of… war?” Hutch squinted, incredulous. 

There was no followup, as Starsky was chewing, and John came over and joined them before he finished. He only joined them for breakfast occasionally; the first week or so, he had been there every day, same time as Hutch, but his routine had slipped after week two.

“Well, if it isn’t Starkinson,” he greeted them, sitting down on Hutch’s other side.

“You hear that, Hutch?” Starsky elbowed him. “We rate a Popsicle.”

It took him a second, but when he remembered ‘Popsicle’ was a portmanteau and not just a brand name, he laughed. 

“Hey, Colby,” Starsky continued, “How’s your new acting buddy?” 

“Phil’s fine,” John nodded, speaking in a measured tone. “He can actually act, which makes him a better choice than either of you.” 

In reality, John had simply drawn the short straw. Hutch had found himself strangely relieved, at first— for whatever reason, it was just that much easier to be vulnerable in front of Starsky than in front of John. If he had to pretend to be a depressed zookeeper or a millner with a dark secret in front of someone, at least Starsky didn’t seem like the type to use it as blackmail. But when Willis had given them their homework on Friday— a scene they had to rehearse outside of class, Hutch had found himself sweaty and nervous. Starsky had immediately suggested they ‘find somewhere private to practice,’ and god, he knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but Hutch couldn’t help but think about why he had given any sort of drama club a wide berth in high school and college. There was just a level of intimacy involved in rehearsing one-on-one that he simply did not intend to share with David Starsky. 

“I can act,” Hutch rebutted, “I just choose not to.” 

“When have you ever been called upon to act, Hutchinson? How do you know you’re capable of acting without actually having done any acting?”

Well, ‘years of pretending not to be attracted to men’ would be the honest answer, but Hutch valued not getting the shit beat out of him, so he bit his tongue. 

“You sound just like Reyes,” he accused instead. 

John grimaced, looking like he had licked something slimy. “I hope I don’t sound that much like a nancy.” 

Hutch swallowed, feigning a smile. He had known that was going to be the reaction he got— that’s why he had said it— but it still made his stomach churn. He knew he’d be a man without allies if anyone ever found out that he and Reyes shared that in common, but hearing it out loud made it uncomfortably real. 

That last night John had mentioned how impressed he was by Hutch's "fine can," or that he kept finding himself in the showers at the same time as Hutch was immaterial. For every miserable, self-effacing gay man, there was usually some straight asshole who got off on baiting queers not far behind. Hutch did legitimately like John, but he also didn't know which category he fell into. 

"Wait." Starsky interjected. Hutch found himself tensing— he really, really didn't want to hear whatever it was Starsky had to say on the topic of gay men. "You think Willis is…" He raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes, as if that expression meant anything other than a visual elbow nudge.

"Starsky, he's a queen." John looked at Starsky like he was slow. 

Starsky was unconvinced. "He used to be a cop!" 

"'Used to' being the key phrase," John explained.

"He said he quit— and they wouldn't invite him back if… y'know." 

John rolled his eyes. "Well I'm sure they have a long list of ex-cop actors, none of whom are bent, to call on. It's not like he was probably their only choice or anything."

This conversation was, on the whole, quite excruciating, but at this Hutch had to laugh. Officer Rogers had tilted and flinched away from Reyes like he was made of molten lead; clearly they would have asked someone else if they could have.

"He had a very firm handshake," Starsky rebutted, continuing to give John a look of incredulity. 

John raised an eyebrow at Hutch, and Hutch closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Should he explain to this naive straight man that not all gays were mincing tutu-wearing fairies, or was it better to simply let him live in ignorance?

"Starsky," he sighed.

"I mean," Starsky put his hands up, supplicant, "Don't get me wrong, I don't really care, I mean, one of my aunt's oldest friends is a queer, I just—" He shrugged. "I wouldn't have guessed!" 

Well, Hutch figured. At least that meant Starsky would probably need to literally see him in the arms of another man before he ever guessed he wasn't straight. 

“If the two of you are done gossipping about the teachers,” Hutch accused, tone flat, “Maybe after breakfast we can pass notes or guess who the head cheerleader is fooling around with.” 

Starsky and John went quiet. They both shoveled eggs into their mouths, and Hutch dug the side of his spoon into his grapefruit half in peace. 

“You know,” Starsky muttered, looking down at his plate.

_ Jesus christ.  _ Hutch braced himself for more gay stereotypes. 

He raised his eyebrows, eyes casting off to the side. “I saw Betty and Veronica  _ and _ Archie driving up to Makeout Point last night, but you didn’t hear it from me.” The right side of Starsky’s mouth crept up, cheeks dimpling. “And I heard Mr. Chips spends a lot of time alone with the lunch lady.”

Hutch dropped his spoon and rubbed at his temples.

“Hutch, is it true that you asked Mary-Anne to the prom? Because I heard she said yes to  _ five _ different guys.” John gave Hutch a look of incalculable pity. He really was a good actor. 

“Wait, Mary-Anne?” Starsky was crestfallen. “ _ I  _ asked Mary-Anne to the prom!”

“Well, you know what you’re gonna have to do,” John sighed, voice heavy with inevitability.

“Both take her and place bets on who she ends up going home with?” Starsky wriggled his brows suggestively. 

“Nope,” John sighed. “Duke it out behind the gym.”

“That’s it,” Hutch finally interrupted, standing up and lifting his tray. “I’m moving to a different table.” 

Starsky grabbed him by the elbow and whined, “No, come on!”

“We’ll be good,” John promised, the look in his eye indicating that he was absolutely under no circumstances going to be good. 

Hutch rolled his eyes and sat back down. “If I wanted to be friends with high schoolers, I’d go sit with Grant and Burke.” 

“Oh come on, Hutch, we’re just practicing our improv, right Starsky?”

On this one thing, Starsky and John appeared to be totally in sync. Starsky gave Hutch a treacly puppy-dog-eyes look and agreed. “Yeah, we just want you to get a good grade.” 

“We’re worried about your growth as a future officer, Hutch.”

“Yeah, what if they make us go undercover as high schoolers, and you don’t remember what it was like in that golden flush of youth?” 

Hutch quietly ate his slice of unbuttered whole wheat toast and waited for them to tire themselves out. He hadn’t realized that up until this point he had been some kind of John-Starsky fulcrum; with both of them on the same side, the load had become dangerously unbalanced. Hunger eventually won out over Hutch-torment, however, and they both quieted down to finish their food. He was somewhat relieved when he remembered that today was the day he had vehicular training and they had marksmanship. 

On the way out of the mess hall, Starsky slapped him on the back, and John slapped him— uncomfortably hard— on the ass. The words ‘I’m going to murder you’ may have come out of his mouth, and John may have traipsed away grinning. Hutch wasn’t sure whether he actually wanted to kill him or whether he felt like grinning, too, but to be fair, he also wasn’t sure whether John was dipping his toe into Uranian waters or an outright homophobe. Or both, maybe. 

During class, Hutch was partnered with Roddy Gallegly, a stone-faced man whose severity was only lessened by a line of freckles over the top of his cheeks. Hutch had heard him speak maybe once since training began. He was fairly humorless, and Hutch found it oddly refreshing. 

As he got in the vehicle, Roddy gave him a nod. He nodded back.

Roddy adjusted the mirrors and quietly muttered, “I’m glad it’s you.”

Hutch made a small noise of surprise, raising his eyebrows in question. He hadn’t really given Roddy Gallegly any thought, and was vaguely alarmed to hear Roddy Gallegly had been thinking of him.

“Rather than Kiley or Sanchez,” he clarified. “Or Grant, or Wong.” His voice was gravelly and flat as he spoke, lacking any hint of judgement despite his apparent dislike of many of the other cadets. “I was with Miller last time and I spent the whole time wishing I had brought my rosary beads.”

Hutch laughed, but as Roddy was saying this last bit, Officer Holland slid into the backseat.

“Gallegly, Hutchinson, our men don’t throw fellow officers under the bus. We protect our own.” If Gallegly was stone-faced, Holland was a sheer cliffside. The man had been born with a standard-issue police baton up his ass. 

“With all due respect, sir,” Roddy returned, still toneless, “Some of the men here seem to be training for the Le Mans rather than traffic safety.”

Maybe he wasn’t quite as humorless as Hutch had thought. 

Officer Holland scowled. “Just drive, Gallegly.” 

Roddy’s eyes darted to the side just for a second to catch Hutch’s, and Hutch suppressed a smile. Their lesson was uneventful; they each took turns driving and taking direction from Holland, and no one did a lot of talking. When their time ended and everyone got out of the car, Roddy gestured for Hutch to follow him. 

He walked with his hands in his pockets. “A couple of the guys are going out for beers Friday.” He nodded, more to himself than to Hutch. “You should come with us. Bring your friend, too.” 

Hutch agreed, and they parted amicably. He wondered if his ‘friend’ was Starsky, or John. 

The next class was Investigative Procedures, which was never exciting, but always enlightening. The instructor for that course was a quiet older man, serious and knowledgeable. He had worked as a detective for twenty years, but despite his age, had also helped to bring Bay City up to date in terms of new scientific methods of criminal detection. Hutch liked listening to him— as much as he enjoyed Starsky’s company  _ outside _ of class, he was very glad he wasn’t with him for this one. He had to assume that in his own section of Investigative Procedures, Starsky was probably pulled out for a talking-to every class. 

Hutch skipped lunch to go back to the barracks to work on a paper. There weren’t a lot of places for quiet and privacy at the academy— even in the middle of the day, when classes were on and lunch was being served, there were two other guys at the barracks, one asleep, one writing something. Hutch pulled a stack of paper out of his desk drawer and sharpened his pencil, getting to work. His neighbor’s increasingly loud snoring became the backing beat to the scratch of his pencil; he contemplated throwing something at him or smothering him. The other cadet folded up what he was writing and slotted it in an envelope; he licked and sealed it, stood up, and smiled at Hutch across the room. 

Wiggling the envelope, he asked, “Writing to your girl, too?”

Hutch gestured at his own paper and the cadet— Lincoln? Duncan? Hutch knew he should probably know, but he couldn’t remember— nodded.

“Working on a paper.”

The cadet with a two-syllable name shook his head. “Damn, wish I had the discipline for that. I always end up writing them by candlelight at two in the morning,” he laughed. “Well, good luck, man.” He tucked his envelope in his pocket and left. 

About four paragraphs in, Hutch heard the door swing open. 

“There you are!”

Starsky blew in, hopping over a pile of clothes in front of a cadet’s bed, door half-slammed behind him, and zoomed over to Hutch’s desk. He put his hand on Hutch’s shoulder and peered over him, chest pressing against his back. Warm, smelling of Hoppe’s and sweat and a hint of aftershave— Hutch knew he should have been shrinking away, flinching, trying to find a way  _ not _ to be almost skin-to-skin with him, but— he was a comfortable weight against him. He felt  _ good _ . Lips too close to hair and skin and the curve of Hutch’s ear, he made an almost disappointed-sounded  _ hrrm _ noise.

Hutch dared not turn his head towards Starsky’s, putting their lips and noses that close together. So he kept his pencil upright in his hand, looking down at his paper. 

“Skipping lunch and disappearing in the middle of a beautiful day like today, what, just to get work done— what kinda poindexter are you, Hutchinson?”

“The kind who wants to pass without the attached caveat of ‘by default’ tacked on, Starsky.” Hutch put his pencil down, but still maintained a straight-forward head and neck. 

Starsky sighed and peeled himself off Hutch’s back, and in one quick motion, rolled onto his bed. “We got our,” he cleared his throat and pronounced the next words with a faux-haughty accent, “ _ Theatre class _ coming up. You ready to go?”

Hutch turned and looked at Starsky, splayed out on his bed, hands behind his head and one leg out long, the other bent upwards, foot planted. He clearly hadn’t been following the regulation grooming routine; after five weeks his hair was already growing fuller, more obviously curly beneath the shear. As usual, his shirt was half-unbuttoned, and from this angle, with the bed pulling the fabric from beneath him, he was on the border of exposing his whole chest. His cadet-mandated slacks were tight on his thighs, and Hutch found himself wanting to touch that bent knee, trail his fingers down, and… 

“Your paper can’t be that interesting,” Starsky sighed. Thank god, he had started flipping through a book Hutch had left on the side of his desk— he clearly hadn’t noticed that Hutch had been staring at him and not the work.

“It’s not, I just really want to get it done,” Hutch lied. 

“Well,” Starsky sighed, snapping the book shut, “Staring at me isn’t going to help you with that.” He rolled over onto his side, grinning. 

Okay. So he had noticed. 

Before Hutch had the chance to defend himself, Starsky continued, apparently uncowed by Hutch’s open gawking. 

“So shall we go?”

Hutch threw suspicion back on Starsky. “Since when do you care about being on time?”

Starsky shrugged. “I like Undercover. I feel like working through that kinda stuff, hands-on stuff, is…” He windmilled his hand. “I like it. Even if it is kinda goofy.”

“I just can’t see the use in it, Starsky. My ability to, to perform  _ Macbeth _ has no bearing on my ability to tell some mobster I want to buy drugs off him.” 

“I disagree,” Starsky shook his head, “I mean, personally, I think Willis has given me a lot of good feedback, y’know? I hadn’t ever thought about a lot of the stuff he’s told us.”

That Starsky seemed to genuinely  _ like _ Willis made Hutch itchy— his skin prickled with a mixture of jealousy and disgust and  _ hope _ tinged with painful longing. He suppressed his usual kneejerk reaction, his desire to push suspicion away from himself onto others, and forced himself not to ask a homophobic question like,  _ ‘what, you have a crush on him or something?’ _

Instead, he took a deep breath in.

“I really gotta get this done. I think I’m just going to ditch— pretend I lost track of time or something.” 

Starsky laughed. “Mr. Valedictorian’s gonna skip class, huh?”

“I was not the Valedictorian,” Hutch defended himself, “and yes.”

“Okay,” Starsky nodded, and then rolled back onto his back. “I’ll keep you company.” 

Hutch felt himself going warm, thinking about spending the next hour alone— well, mostly alone, other than the sleeping cadet— with Starsky rolling around on his bed. Good god, his sheets were going to smell like him. 

“Didn’t you just say you found the class helpful?” 

“Yeah, but it’s no fun if it’s just me.” Starsky rolled again, onto his belly. He tucked his chin up onto his folded arms and looked at Hutch slightly askew. Hutch couldn’t help letting his eyes roam down Starsky’s back, over that taut rounded ass, down the backs of his thighs. 

“There’s an odd number anyway,” Hutch insisted, punctuated with an awkward clearing of his throat, “You can just work with Colby.”

Starsky made a noncommittal noise, still looking up at Hutch, the blue in his eyes like Ming porcelain, cool and fine and covetable. 

Hutch realized, starkly, that if they remained here together, he was going to end up doing something very stupid. 

He put his paper and pencil in the desk drawer.

“Alright, fine, let’s go.” 

Starsky perked up immediately, rolling back onto his side as Hutch stood. He thrust his hand out, palm open, and Hutch helped him up from the bed. Hutch grabbed his bag and they headed out, the late afternoon sun blinding after time spent in the dusky barracks. 

Shielding his eyes, about a pace in front of Starsky, Hutch immediately regretted his choice to be responsible. A lost hour with Starsky— even a lost hour in which he’d have to struggle to keep his thoughts chaste and his hands busy— was  _ so  _ much more appealing than an hour of touchy-feely  _ acting  _ bullshit. The realization dawned that he really, earnestly wanted to spend more time with Starsky. Time outside what was proscribed— time divorced from classes and structured lunch periods. 

Preferably, of course, time where he also wouldn’t be tempted to accidentally out himself to a straight guy by throwing himself at him, but any time at all sounded beneficial. 

He thought about Roddy’s invitation to go drinking with the guys. 

“Hey, Starsk,” he began, looking over his shoulder, “You wanna get a drink with me sometime?” 

Grinning like a kid, Starsky lit up brighter than the declining orange sun. He was radiant.

There was no way Hutch was getting out of this without getting burned. 


End file.
